Patricia Heaton Attacks Sandra Fluke Over Twitter

I know you were all breathlessly waiting to hear what Patricia Heaton, who played the wife on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” had to say about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke’s public comments regarding birth control coverage under health care reform. (More background here and here.) But unfortunately for you, Heaton has deleted all of her tweets about the topic. Why could that be? It seems the public did not look too kindly on Heaton’s tweets last week, which included:

“If every Tweaton sent Georgetown Gal one condom, her parents wouldn’t have to cancel basic cable, & she would never reproduce – sound good?”

And:

“G-Gal: you’ve given yer folks great gift for Mother’s/Father’s Day! Got up in front of whole world & said I’m having tons of sex – pay 4 it!”

Other important thoughts from the Twitter feed of Patricia Heaton include these gems:

“Hey G-Gal! Change major to Health Sciences, then look at pix of people w/syphilis, gonorrhrea [sic], herpes, and chlamydia! Instant birth control!”

“Hey G-Town: stop buying toothpaste, soap, and shampoo! You’ll save money, and no one will want to sleep with you!”

Patricia Heaton, much like Rush Limbaugh, is missing the point with her apologies: both should be apologizing for slut-shaming. Maybe they think they’re just making jokes, but what reasonable people hear is the insinuation that Sandra Fluke — and others who think like her — are promiscuous sluts. When people like Heaton and Limbaugh use words like “slut” and “prostitute” (his words), they’re wielding it as an insult. It is a judgment of other people’s private sexual behavior and their moral character. As Fluke herself noted yesterday on “The View,” that sort of language has long been used to silence women. That is what the likes of Limbaugh and Heaton should be directly apologizing for — not just vaguely apologizing for their “humor.”